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In all seriousness, there doesn't seem to be any specific outer space object involved. Just an outpost of some kind, a military-funded laboratory centre or something of the sort, the world we call "Horizon" and a facility called "Double Impact".

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In all seriousness, there doesn't seem to be any specific outer space object involved. Just an outpost of some kind, a military-funded laboratory centre or something of the sort, the world we call "Horizon" and a facility called "Double Impact".

The moon/planet in episode 1 and 2 could be set on could be Europa or Trappist-1D. and the planet in "Horizon" could be venus. Or an Unnamed alien planet.

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Instead of aliens, you may fight creatures, created by AGM to be used as slaves or soldiers, which rebelled. The Horizon may be a far away planet AGM wanted to terraform using the creatures as workforce, but things went out of hand and now the planet is made suitable to this new life form. The outposts of Phase 1 episodes 1 and 2 are used as scientific labs for the terraformation activity.

In Phase 2 this new offspring invades Earth because yes. Freedoom Phase Two: Horizon on Earth sound good too, IMO.

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Isn't that where the sky meets the Earth? A good metaphor for aliens, then. Or angels; if in the plot it turns out Heaven was a lie. I like that.

Referencing Heaven would imply that there is a Hell as well, which we all is know is something Doom took. Not to mention that Catoptromancy proposed removing religious-like assets from Freedoom, so I don't think a Heaven-like world would be appropriate.

TBQH, even I don't know exactly what "Horizon" is in Freedoom, other than it being a "world", and I kept it that way (let the player think what Horizon could actually be). Same goes for the creatures, barely any information as to what they are, other than being "experiments". Doesn't mention if they are purely made by AGM, or an alien race that AGM experimented on or even if they are mutated humans. Just experiments.

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Referencing Heaven would imply that there is a Hell as well, which we all is know is something Doom took. Not to mention that Catoptromancy proposed removing religious-like assets from Freedoom, so I don't think a Heaven-like world would be appropriate.

TBQH, even I don't know exactly what "Horizon" is in Freedoom, other than it being a "world", and I kept it that way (let the player think what Horizon could actually be). Same goes for the creatures, barely any information as to what they are, other than being "experiments". Doesn't mention if they are purely made by AGM, or an alien race that AGM experimented on or even if they are mutated humans. Just experiments.

Horizon could be a Alien planet around a red dwarf. Scientists think that because of the state of the star and the red light it produces would make the plant color and the color of rocks red. Generally its just all red.

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It doesn't necessarily have to be "Hell" but imho it should be very close to it.. a red firey dimension full of dark sinister symbolism, blood and gothic atmosphere.

Otherwise a lot of the Freedoom "hell" art would need to be replaced, and it would ruin the mood of hell-oriented pwads that try to go for a dark-medieval feeling when they are loaded with Freedoom as an iwad.

Plus, personally I think the contrast of dark age horror areas and high-tech sci-fi areas is a very interesting one, makes it cooler and adds diversity. Otherwise it's just going from a futuristic facility to a futuristic planet.

I still think that if for some reason you really want Freedoom to abandon using the concept of "Hell" at least it should be based on some dark cosmic horror concept like the ones from Lovecraft, which brings some mysticism and allows for it to still follow a sort of dark age setting. It might be an alien culture, but a demonic one, horrid and shapeless. With ancient knowledge so alien that breaks the minds of men that try to grasp it, driving them insane.

It shouldn't be the typical green alien race with feet and legs and futuristic (yet comprehensible) technology that could have come from Star Wars, imho.

In that direction, it would make sense if AGM scientists, in their research, awoke ancient alien beings from the depths of the Earth that should have remained dormant. The contact with such ancient creatures gave them incredible knowledge that applied in their experiments resulted in the abominations we see in Freedoom, all the while also turning them insane. The scientists praised the ancient beings as if they were gods, and were being manipulated by them almost like being mind-controlled. Finally, the evil ancient ones transmit to the scientists knowledge to create a teleportation channel to the alien home world/dimension/planet, at which point everything went crazy... to a point in which the "Savior of Humanity" might be the only human with some sanity left to try and set things straight.

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I would suggest a more sci-fi setting - not that it would be without horror, of course.

Double Impact, anybody?

I like having these strange world levels that aren't the expected techbase levels. Mappers can go nuts with the architecture and create amazing things, because anything goes when it comes to Hell/Horizon, right? That's why I enjoy Freedoom's Chapter 3.

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Horizon is pretty much Hell. Its already a demonic, twisted, mystic, Lovecraftian place.

I know thats how some of us perceive it. But I'm not sure if that's really part of Freedoom's lore.

As you said before, "nobody knows" where it's really set, and the only story is the intermission which just says that it's a world worse than the outpost.

Things are still under heavy evolution and it was even discussed to remove "religious imaginery". Considering that Horizon doesn't really contain Buddhas or actual Christian crosses i assume it means satanic-looking symbols.. which is even something debatable, a lot of Lovecraftian lore could also be considered satanic, there's a lot of cultism around it after all. So if the setting for Horizon doesn't get clearly defined I'm afraid it might end up evolving in a more mainstream sci-fi direction.

Even the name is more sci-fi than horror. "Horizon" is not a name I'd use for a land of terrors, it even sounds like something good, it evokes the culmination of human research, or space exploration (Jayextee even referenced the sky and angels). I said it before but i would have gone for some hard to pronounce Lovecraftian name if the setting for it was really Lovecraftian as you said. Leaving it so open to interpretation will just result in lack of direction and who knows where it'll end up.

But this of course is just an opinion from someone who barely contributed and i guess the final word is in the artist leadership of the team

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Even the name is more sci-fi than horror. "Horizon" is not a name I'd use for a land of terrors, it even sounds like something good, it evokes the culmination of human research, or space exploration (Jayextee even referenced the sky and angels). I said it before but i would have gone for some hard to pronounce Lovecraftian name if the setting for it was really Lovecraftian as you said.

Leaving it so open to interpretation will just result in lack of direction and who knows where it'll end up.

About the name, that's the beauty of it. It sounds like something good, but then it's shown to be not. The intermission text shows that the player probably think it's somewhere better than the place he was stuck in, but in reality it wasn't.

Lovecraftian, not Lovecraftian, I believe anything goes, as long as the player enjoys it.

This is just my opinion, but I'm not a big fan of words that are hard to pronounce (look at Marathon). Why name something when no one can pronounce it right/at all?

Leaving it open to interpretation will make players more interested into wondering what exactly is going on. Doom takes a similar approach, giving you clues to gather enough details but not enough for something absolute.

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Seeing as I am a czar for the first third of Freedoom, I say that the first cluster of phase 2 takes place on some kind of partially terraformed planet where water is extracted from deep and processed for some purpose, not far from our own solar system. I have no idea how this would fit into the rest of the story as it already is or will be altered by the other czars, but this is the general theme I have decided on for my map cluster. Water-themed techbases. Aquatex ought to fit rather well for this purpose. :P

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This insistence on making/borrowing a bunch of random content THEN trying to explain it is getting old.

It'll be easier now that each cluster of maps is under the control of a person each. Each cluster will have consistency (not sure about Blastfrog's cluster though, but meh), similar to how Freedoom's Chapter 3 now uses music solely by Blueworrior (excluding C3M9).

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first cluster of phase 2 takes place on some kind of partially terraformed planet

The idea of a terraformed planet was what I had for the Horizon. But at this point we can set Freedoom on an Horizon Solar System with many planets terraformed by AGM (Advanced Geoengineering Megacorp?). Some planets are not yet completed terraformed so they resemble and Hellish place.

But I am writing a small background which I hope to post as soon as possible.

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I have always thought of Earth. Freedoom guy goes far forward and back in time to kill the monsters that invaded through time portals. Monsters are from Earth, just far in the future or past. AGM scientists invent time machine, monsters from the far future invade the past, present, and future.

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Hell, or an alternative hellish reality (which is more or less the same) have been already used in Doom. I would suggest a more sci-fi setting - not that it would be without horror, of course.

You might be able to use new sci-fi textures in the new planet. But new sprites cannot be created, which means the macabre sprites with skulls, bones, altars and blood should stay because PWADs use them in gothic maps. And they would be out of place in Freedoom if they were not accompanied by matching hellish dark age textures and elements for the areas/levels they are used in.

A sci-fi backstory in a red bloody planet that uses an environment that matches such sprites and is full of horror elements is basically already "a hellish reality", it's precisely the setting I was talking about. I just didn't specify if it's a planet or what.

Imho, either adapt to be able to fit a hellish dark age setting for those areas in the backstory or make new maps using new textures without using the dark age elements. But I don't think those sprites should be changed for the sake of making them blend better in a more sci-fi map, because then PWADs will look bad.

The graphics in Freedoom that are used in Doom PWADs necessarily have to be able to fit a hellish setting similar to Doom's.

And I don't think following a similar setting is a bad thing. Doom doesn't have the monopoly on horror hellish environments, and it's not like going full sci-fi would be any more original (Duke Nukem? Hacx? AliensTC?).